


V8 Volante

by rods_n_mockers



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Friendship/Love, Gen, Guilt, Immortality, Loss, Post-Series 03: Children of Earth (Torchwood)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 08:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27348124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rods_n_mockers/pseuds/rods_n_mockers
Summary: Twelve years ago, Ianto Jones was standing outside the Kingsway Blockbuster in Newport, admiring a model Aston Martin - V8 Volante.Twelve years later, the car lies among his worldly possessions.Now, Rhiannon Davies confronts the man responsible for it all.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	V8 Volante

_The V8 Volante…_

Ianto Jones loved that car, almost as much as Owen Harper loved smoking a spliff in the sixth form – enough to make him linger outside Kingsway’s Blockbuster every afternoon, even in winter. Even under the chill Welsh drizzle, persistent as one of a broken faucet. Even when he knew the Debenhams in Pill was a shorter way from school. But Debenhams’ a crock of shit, even if his dad was almost the manager there and he could get toys for free. His dad’s a crock of shit too. No one blames him. Everyone on this side of South Wales knows there are only two categories of fathers: ‘dead’ and ‘arsehole’, and he was unlucky enough to be blessed with the latter.

But Ianto Jones loved that car, even more than a twelve-year-old Toshiko Sato loved Binary. Except Ianto was fourteen and, according to his dad, fourteen-year-olds who played with toys were sissies. But Ianto didn’t want to be a real man, not if it meant joining the rugby team and getting his bollocks kicked by that brute Johnny Davies – lard-arsed even in his adolescent days – even if he was Rhiannon’s boyfriend. Even if behind the mean banter he was only a harmless clodhopper with a predilection for rib-crushing bear hugs. So he’s here, pressing his benumbed nose to the display window until the glass fogged up and disappeared like his prospects – or so he probably thought.

In actuality, it was difficult to ascertain exactly what the teenager with hungry cerulean eyes and oversized hand-me-down clothes was thinking that particular 4:31pm in downtown Newport. Not when the real-life accounts blur into imagination – perhaps if he turned his head this direction, or the ashen clouds pirouetted in such a way, a pinprick of sunlight would dissever the city, along with linear time, in half. But as a true addict can differentiate flour and snow by touch only, a man who can never forget can recognise a friend by impression – the briefest nod, the twitch of a hand, the way a huff of breath escapes their nostrils, even if it were to merely amalgamate as frost on a blockbuster window. Each nuance, aged backwards through time, still rings as true as a bullet to the head, or better yet – a bomb to the stomach. Still, a bomb to the stomach would carry less grief than an eleven-by-five 1987 Aston Martin model bore to the inconspicuous nook of an all-but-child’s windowsill, like an augury that’s come to perch on the living’s bedstead, making the berth a coffin. One drags a finger across the well-worn wheels and it rasps back in the resentful voice of a dead man. The ghost boy protested, _Is nowt black really, like ev'ry un says…_

_…It’s actually juniper green_.

_Bastard._ Rhiannon recriminates, tears welling in her eyes – green, not blue. _You bastard… I knew dad never got him that car._

It’s the second time in two thousand years that one is looked on by a maternal woman with such undiluted abhor (second in the span of six weeks, if one goes by this god-forsaken timeline). Like arsenic – from first hand experience – like being dragged through permafrost – again, first hand experience – something deplorably inhuman locked away in the subconscious, due to resurface only at the turn of a millennium.

One can do nothing just then, except to look on blankly, with the eyes of a dead man that one is – that one should have been many times over. And when Rhiannon turns away to sob into her hands, one does not cry – one does not have the tears or the dignity left. Instead, one listens to her terrible gasps like taking strokes of a scourge; Runs the corrugated wheels over one’s fingertips until blood begins to show. But it is fruitless – there is no atonement for the devil.

One is already at the door when she speaks, one almost misses her, a soft voice still teetering from the tears that shook it. _I’m scared_ , she says. _Jack... I’m scared that one day I’ll wake up and forget…_

What?

The way he rolled his eyes, or smiled?  
The way he sometimes dropped the _‘t’_ s at the end of words?  
The way his brows furrowed in thought and in indignation?  
The scent of him, under the thick infusion of coffee and smoke, that clings to pillows and dreams?  
The sound of his laughter?

One stops, but does not turn around. (The sun is slanting through the unshuttered window behind the woman, and one fears that by facing it, one will stumble like Icarus.) There is no way of knowing if the words that come next are directed towards her, but whoever else might one be replying to? It's true, one does not even know what has escaped one's own lips until the dead man’s voice rings hollow in the oppressive air, empty and remorseless. Like the V8 Volante skidding over asphalt.

It says: _I wish I could forget._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you enjoyed this short vignette(?) and my first publication on this big intimidating site. If you can leave a "kudos" or comment on your thoughts I would deeply appreciate it.
> 
> I know the pacing is kind of bizarre but I hope the narrative made sense as a whole. My initial idea was Jack travelling back in time to visit everyone he lost at different points of their lives. In the end, I decided I would reserve that for a separate piece of work and relinquish some of my post Children of Earth angst here. (It's been four months since I watched it, so I'm actually just oversensitive.) However, I did leave in some implications of Jack visiting Owen and Tosh in their pasts (and no, I'm not over their deaths either) so I hope you liked these little references. I also wanted Jack to meet Rhiannon at some point, even if it's not under the best of circumstances. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you have a fabulous day – stay safe, stay happy and wear your masks. And please tell me if you want to see more of my writing in the future. x


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